Day 128 of the "What are you reading, and why?" project, and Tina Brown is reading The Icarus Syndrome, by Peter Beinert, one of her writers over at The Daily Beast.

How do I know? I heard it on NPR! Morning Edition. Twice! Once very early, on the way to the pool for lap swimming, and once not too much later on the way back from the hospital for a fasting blood test. (Yes, doughnuts and highlander grog coffee on the way home.) Our local radio station repeats Morning Edition twice...in the morning, or it wouldn't make much sense.

Anyway, The Icarus Syndrome is about flying too close to the sun in terms of hubris, or getting too big for our britches...and their waxed-on feathers. In fact the subtitle is A History of American Hubris, which suggests we just keep doing it, that neither myth nor experience has taught us how to avoid it.

Tina Brown, in her Morning Edition interview, was noting that "learning the lessons of Vietnam" is hard to do, as warnings not to get involved in recent wars were not heeded and proved unfounded...but then, as Beinert explains, America got in a "cycle of hubris" and did try to do too much, namely Iraq and Afghanistan at the same time. To use yet another cliche, America bit off more than it could chew.

Which brings me to chocolate pie. My friend Kim has offered to bring some to our book group discussion of The Help, by Kathryn Stockett. If you have read it, you know why I am thinking, "Ick-R-Us."

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Day 42 of the "What are you reading, and why?" project.

Karen is reading The Elegance of the Hedgehog, by Muriel Barbery, along with Decoding the Human Body Field by Peter H. Fraser and Harry Massey. Ooh, French fiction with philosophy in it + new ideas in health about how body & mind work together. If I were reading these two at the same time, my brain might explode! The Hedgehog book sounds like something I should read next year, when I am 54, to match the 54-year-old residential concierge narrator. And now you know my age. But my college-student son thinks I look about 34, which is sweet. (I've linked you to a paperback of this, but it also includes the description of an audio version.)

Christina was recently reading An American Childhood by Annie Dillard and Bob has no doubt finished by now Barbara Jordan: American Hero, by Mary Beth Rogers. America and change in America are definitely on my mind today, as we watch the unfolding miracle of health care reform. Wooee! Speaking of France, remember when French fries had to be called American fries? And speaking of childhood and American icons, may Holden Caulfield and J. D. Salinger both rest in peace. And speaking of French fries, I want some.

My random, partially exploded, curlicued brain does connect something here--the 12-year-old French girl in Hedgehog, one of the narrators via her journal, is compared to Holden Caulfield in wry innocence. My own local book group is reading Franny & Zooey next, and we can never keep copies of that or Catcher in the Rye on the shelf at Babbitt's. If they come into the store, they go immediately onto the Select New Arrivals shelf by the door and soon walk back out. Those, and books by Ayn Rand. Sigh....

And speaking of Franny, she is a character in The Heroines, the novel by Eileen Favorite in which heroines from other books come to stay at a bed and breakfast run by Anne-Marie and her 13-year-old daughter Penny. See, things do connect in my hodgepodge brain! Sarah is reading The Heroines because she went to hear the author speak recently at her college. Sarah is also reading Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray, who has the best middle name ever! And I am definitely linking you to the edition with the sexiest cover, and the one that most resembles Vanity Fair, the magazine, my guilty pleasure.

And that's enough of a hodgepodge for today.

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